UK Nature and Environment

A number of bioluminescent plankton have been spotted off the coast of Cornwall.

Bioluminescent plankton are small creatures floating in the sea that have the ability to emit light when disturbed by a predator or motion.

Visitors to Kynance Cove managed to catch a glimpse of the rare sight last weekend.

Thomas Winstone was visiting the area from Wales with a friend, attempting to photograph a milkyway through the "clear Cornish skies", but then stumbled across the Plankton on Sunday night.

Experts are warning of an unusually high number of jellyfish in UK seas this summer. These are the ones out there

A project is underway to investigate what whales are eating off Scotland’s west coast by examining the make-up of their poop! We are delighted to be part of the team - led by Dr Conor Ryan - collecting samples, armed and ready to scoop from the deck of our research vessel, Silurian. Read more about the project below…

Spirits have been high among whale enthusiasts around The Minch in recent years, as larger whale species like fin and humpback whales have been settling in the region. While the smaller minke whale has been commonly seen for many years, the arrival of their larger cousins raises questions about what is sustaining their enormous appetites.

Technology that monitors birdsong as part of conservation efforts is to be rolled out across Shropshire.

The Green Box Project involves recordings via wireless boxes operated by solar panel. Recordings are uploaded to the cloud, where birds are then identified by AI.

It is hoped the collected data could support conservation planning and contribute to national biodiversity databases.

After 40 years, intertidal seagrass has grown in the Helford River, marking a breakthrough in Cornwall Wildlife Trust and Seasalt’s restoration efforts.

The Helford River has seen a glimmer of green hope. For the first time in over 40 years, native intertidal seagrass has successfully regrown in its waters—thanks to the collaborative efforts of Seasalt and Cornwall Wildlife Trust, now in their fourth year of the Seeding Change Together project.

This pioneering initiative is exploring low-carbon, low-cost methods to restore seagrass habitats in Cornwall’s estuaries – ecosystems vital to ocean health.

The first farmer-led programme to vaccinate badgers against tuberculosis is beginning in Cornwall with an aim to prevent transmission of the disease to cattle.

The programme is significant because farmers and scientists have long been at loggerheads over the culling of badgers as a way to control TB. The three-year trial will start with 70 farms and involve farmers trapping, testing and vaccinating badgers, with training provided by scientists. An earlier pilot study of the approach showed TB rates in badgers fell from 16% to zero in four years.

TB can devastate cattle herds and more than 20,000 infected cattle were slaughtered in the last year in England. The badger cull started in 2013 and has killed about 250,000 badgers but has been highly controversial.

Yorkshire Water has been ordered to pay more than £900,000 after polluting a watercourse with millions of litres of chlorinated water, causing the death of hundreds of fish.

Sheffield Magistrates' Court heard how the firm's Ingbirchworth Water Treatment Works, near Barnsley, discharged intermittently into the freshwater watercourse linking Ingbirchworth and Scout Dike reservoirs for almost a month.

District Judge Tim Spruce said Yorkshire Water had shown a high degree of negligence, resulting in "a prolonged and catastrophic loss of aquatic life".

Tourist discovers ‘extinct’ jellyfish while rock-pooling in Outer Hebrides Thistle-shaped Depastrum cyathiforme was last seen in France in 1976, but has now been found on South Uist

The distinctive jellyfish was feared globally extinct after being last spotted in Roscoff, northern France, in 1976.

But a holidaymaker who was rock-pooling on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides found four of the creatures, which attach themselves to rocks rather like anemones, and took what turned out to be the first ever photographs of the species, previously only known from historic drawings and paintings.

A 10,000-acre estate in the Highlands has been awarded special European status recognising its genetic diversity of tree species.

Parts of the juniper and silver birch woodland at Trees for Life's Dundreggan rewilding centre in Glenmoriston have been classed as Gene Conservation Units.

A spokesperson for the conservation charity said the "unusually wet location" of juniper and the "extreme westerly location" of silver birch have helped make the tree populations unique.

When the first pair of beavers to be legally released in England crawled sleepily from their crates into the ponds of Purbeck Heath in Dorset, it seemed like a watershed moment for wildlife in the UK.

Wildlife charities rejoiced as ministers finally agreed for the nature-boosting rodents to be released, subject to licence, into the wild. Nature-friendly farmers kept an eager eye out for the application forms, hoping they could host the fascinating creatures on their land.

But nature experts say the scheme has stalled, with not a single licence granted since those beavers were let loose on the National Trust reserve in March. The Guardian understands 40 expressions of interest have been sent to the government since then, 20 of which are from the Wildlife Trusts, but none have yet been granted a release licence.

A colony of 50 water voles has been released into the wild in Surrey, where the species has been locally extinct for 20 years.

The voles, an endangered species, were bred in captivity at the Wildwood Trust in Kent, which specialises in breeding the mammals.

They were released into the Chamber Mead wetlands in Epsom, created over the past two years to filter sewage pollution and other run-off out of a local stream before it enters the Hogsmill River.

A nature reserve has recorded its largest number of fledglings of a threatened bird species in half a century.

RSPB Minsmere, on the Suffolk coast, counted at least 205 sandwich terns chicks this summer - the most at the site since 1974.

Senior site manager Nick Forster said that during the breeding season the birds had a "striking head plumage" which he felt made "them look like they've got Beatle haircuts".

Local politicians have recognised the right of a famous chalk stream, the Test in Hampshire, to flow freely and unpolluted.

Councillors on Test Valley borough council voted unanimously to acknowledge “the intrinsic rights” of the rivers within its boundaries, including the Test, which is renowned for its trout and fly fishing.

It means councillors and officials will have to keep the Test front and centre when making decisions on planning, land use, water management and biodiversity.

A unique stretch of coastline has been given £250,000 to protect its marine life.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded the money to Cumbria Wildlife Trust to highlight the important species living in Allonby Bay.

In 2023 the site was designated as England's first inshore Highly Protected Marine Area (HPMA).

People always ask me: isn’t it too cold to snorkel in Scotland? And I reply that while it’s obviously much cooler than it would be in Spain, the sea does warm up from May, when the temperature rises from about 9C to as high as 12-15C by August and September.

I go snorkelling in Scotland all year round. I work for the Scottish Wildlife Trust, developing snorkel trails on the Scottish coast and creating guides to the places you can go to enjoy snorkelling in a particular area. But even so, the Wildlife Trust always recommends wearing a wetsuit.

In the UK, we sometimes think that to connect with nature you have to go to really exotic, faraway places and spend a lot of money. But actually, it can be more effective to connect with the local marine life on your doorstep.

People living in one Bristol neighbourhood are transforming its spaces to boost wellbeing and help the environment.

Volunteers working on the Really Wild Lockleaze project, set up by Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust, have planted bulbs and fruit trees and worked on woodland, ponds and hedgerows.

As well as improving the look of the suburb, the project hopes to encourage more biodiversity and is monitoring plants and animals, including bumblebees.

"There was some worry that because of housing developments we would lose some of our green space," said Laura Tarlo-Ross from the trust. "It's just grown from there."

An ancient breed of pigs are creating healthy wetland areas for wildlife by chomping on a problem plant.

Iron age pigs are a hybrid of wild boar and domestic pigs and are close to the pigs represented in prehistoric cave paintings. They are currently helping us manage a non native invasive plant species, crassula helmsii - also known as New Zealand pigmyweed – at our Lilbourne Meadows reserve in Northamptonshire.

The reserve is still being created but part of the site has recently opened to the public with a new path accessible on foot by visitors.

Campaigners in Devon are calling for a right to the riverbank after finding their local river, the Dart, has 108 separate owners, with an eighth of it owned via offshore companies.

Locals used site visits, angling maps, Companies House records and Land Registry data to find out who owns the River Dart.

The government in its election manifesto last year promised to implement nine new “river walks” in England to extend public access to the countryside, after it U-turned on a previous policy to enshrine a right to roam in law.

More than half of councils in the United Kingdom continue to use pesticides in parks, playgrounds, pavements, playing fields and housing estates, research revealed on Wednesday.

But increasingly, local authorities are taking action to end or reduce their use of pesticides, according to research by the Pesticide Action Network.

The most widely used pesticide by local authorities is the weedkiller glyphosate, which has been linked to cancer. The overuse of pesticides has also been linked to major declines in wildlife, including birds, bees and hedgehogs.

In a bold conservation first, WWT has turned to one of Britain’s most common birds, the Eurasian blue tit, in a new trial that could help save its rarest of cousins, the British willow tit – now Britain’s fastest declining resident bird species.

Under licence from Natural England, eggs from blue tit nest boxes have been artificially incubated and hatched, with the chicks' hand-reared at WWT Slimbridge’s Conservation Breeding Unit (CBU).

The chicks were closely monitored, fed between dawn and dusk and socialised before being released into the nature reserve at WWT Slimbridge at the end of June.

Regular sightings of otters on a river are a sign of a healthy local ecosystem, a charity has said.

The Wear Rivers Trust said evidence of the mammals living on the River Deerness in County Durham showed the area was home to a diverse range of wildlife.

A local resident spotted otters 38 times on his trail camera last year, while environmental groups regularly find otter droppings - known as spraints - in the area.

Wet wipe producers should be charged to remove their pollution from England’s waterways, the author of a government review into reforming the sector has said.

Sewage has been a critical factor in the devastating pollution of our waterways, but other sources of pollution include microplastics, consumer products such as wet wipes, and the byproducts of modern manufacturing, such asPfas (“forever chemicals”), as well as fertiliser and pesticides from farming. Many of these have been linked to harmful effects on human health and the natural environment.

The fairest way to deal with this, Sir Jon Cunliffe, a former Bank of England deputy governor, said, could be to apply the “polluter pays” principle, whereby the company behind the pollution contributes towards its removal. “The alternative is for everyone to pay for it through their bills, and the question is, should we spread that among everybody, or should we go through a polluter pays route? So I think, really, we should look at those routes,” he said.

In a remarkable first for Cornish waters, two orcas from the Iberian population were spotted near the Isles of Scilly, confirming their northernmost sighting to date. The rare encounter was made by skipper Joe Pender during a seabird survey near St Agnes earlier this month.

The orcas, later identified as members of the elusive Iberian C pod, were seen near Pol Bank southwest of Bishop Rock. Pender, who operates Scilly Pelagics tours, initially noticed unusually large dorsal fins before realising he was looking at orcas - not common dolphins. "Everyone on board was ecstatic," he said. "I've only seen one before, about 25 years ago."

Rebecca Allen of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust confirmed it was the first recorded sighting of Iberian orcas in the region. These orcas typically inhabit the Straits of Gibraltar during winter, making their presence in Cornwall highly unusual.